


didn't know I was lost (wake me up when it's all over)

by purplenighttime



Series: long way home [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (except not really chance), Chance Meetings, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplenighttime/pseuds/purplenighttime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's been a voice in the back of Steve's mind, ever since DC, that whispers he might never get Bucky back, that maybe his best friend is too far gone. He hates it, hates thinking that one day he'll wake up and Bucky will be gone again.</p><p>(In the end, it's Bucky who finds <i>him</i>, and not the other way around.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Just because the world now knows that HYDRA is alive and well in the 21st century doesn’t mean that HYDRA stops being a threat. If anything, HYDRA’s name all over the news has made them even more daring. So it isn’t much of a surprise when Steve hears that they’ve stormed the United Nations and taken hostages.

He’d never admit it to anyone, but it’s a relief to see some action again. After two months in Europe weeding out various HYDRA cells, the day-to-day life in New York is dull. Sam’s got his group at the VA, and Steve spends a lot of time drawing, sketching out the Manhattan skyline or the trees in the park across the street. But he also spends more time than is probably healthy reading the Winter Soldier file, trying to find something in the medical records and field reports that’ll tell him where to find Bucky.

When he gets the text from Fury – which is a surprise, considering the last anyone had heard, the man was still off in Europe – requesting backup, he’s ready for a fight.

The CIA already has a strike team on site, and the agent in charge turns out to be Sharon Carter. She nods as Steve and Sam approach – “Neighbor,” she acknowledges – and then briefs them on the situation. The reports they’re getting from inside the building suggest that the hostages include the Secretary General and various members of his staff, and they’re being held on the upper floors.

“As far as we know, there are two main groups of hostages – one on the twentieth floor, the other on the 28th,” Sharon says, indicating the blueprint. “We’ll enter on the ground floor and head up.”

HYDRA’s no less lethal, but they’re disorganized, and the strike team recovers the hostages on the 20th floor with no casualties. Sam checks in minutes later to confirm he’s neutralized the HYDRA agents on the roof who have been preventing the NYPD chopper from landing. Checking to make sure the strike team’s got the evacuation under control, Steve heads back out into the hall to get the other group.

 _“Cap, 911 call says there’s two hostages hiding on the 26 th floor,” _Sam says over comms.

“Copy that,” Steve confirms, taking the six flights with ease. When he gets to the 26th floor, though, he freezes.

The Winter Soldier – it’s not Bucky, not the way he’s moving, like a well-oiled machine rather than a person – is thirty feet down the hall, dragging a man by the collar. Steve recognizes him as the Secretary General; his hands are in plastic cuffs but he’s alive, at least.

For now.

He’s never forgotten what Sam had said, all those weeks ago in DC – _I don’t think he’s the kind of guy you save. He’s the kind you stop_ – and raises his shield as the Winter Soldier turns to face him. He’s not wearing a mask, and Bucky’s face is expressionless as he turns to shove the Secretary through one of the doors along the corridor.

Steve remembers how a hint of a smirk had always ghosted across his friend’s face when they’d seen action during the war, but there’s nothing like that there now.  Just a brutal efficiency as he turns back to Steve, ripping the doorknob off with his metal hand. There’s a quick flash of something across his face, and Steve desperately wants it to be recognition.

It’s familiar and foreign at the same time, staring across the hall at each other, and if Steve closes his eyes he can almost believe they’re storming a HYDRA facility back during the war, back before everything went to shit. If he opens them, he remembers the helicarrier, remembers the last time the Winter Soldier stood between him and where he needed to be. Remembers how he couldn’t fight his best friend, in the end.

Pushing down the memories – not now, people are in danger and he can’t afford to think about Bucky now – Steve raises his gun and fires twice, aiming for center of mass. The Winter Soldier drops and rolls, using the momentum to get to his feet and stride purposefully toward Steve. The man reaches for something in his belt, and before Steve can realize what he’s doing he’s thrown a knife.

There isn’t any time to react, but the knife misses him by inches, flying over his left shoulder. Behind him, there’s a choking sound, and he looks in time to see a HYDRA agent collapse, knife in his throat. Suddenly, there is a whole team of HYDRA agents swarming around them, guns trained on Steve. And the Winter Soldier is walking toward him, hand reaching for his thigh holster.

Despite his earlier resolve, Steve can’t really believe this is happening, had thought after DC – after Hoboken last week – that Bucky was there, somewhere inside the Winter Soldier. Had thought that, if he could just _talk_ to him Bucky would know who he was, see him as a person rather than a mission. But the man walking toward him now has murder in his eyes, and Steve barely gets his shield up before the man fires once, twice, three times.

None of the shots hit the vibranium. From the corner of his eye, Steve sees three agents fall to the ground, bullet holes an angry red on their foreheads. Another two shots ring out, and then all the HYDRA agents are down.

The Winter Soldier – or maybe it isn’t the Winter Soldier, maybe it really is _Bucky_ – is close enough now that Steve could reach out and touch him, if he wanted. Instead he stays still, trying not to do anything that’ll be seen as a threat.

Neither of them say anything for a long moment, and then Bucky reaches into a pocket, tosses a small metal object to Steve.

It’s a key. “Conference room, six floors up,” Bucky says, and Steve nods, understanding. He's not here with HYDRA, he’d come for the same reason Steve had. And that fact gives Steve hope, something he hadn’t dared to consider.

Another long silence, and then Bucky clears his throat. “Don’t ask me to come home.”

Steve wants more than anything to get his best friend back no matter how fucked up he is, and damn the consequences, but he nods.

He and Sam had talked about this, about how Bucky might need some space to figure out who he is for himself – “He’s had people telling him what to do for God knows how long,” Sam had said.

“I’ll be here,” Steve tells Bucky.

And then Bucky is gone, slipping past him into the stairway. Steve gives himself a minute to push away the disappointment – and why is he disappointed now, when his best friend is alive and recognizes him?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve gets back from his morning jog and is just about to sit down with the paper when there's a knock at the door.

In the end, it’s Bucky who finds him, and not the other way around. It isn’t surprising, not really. The closest Steve’s ever gotten to Bucky since DC was the UN. Even in Europe, when they were actively looking for the Winter Soldier, he and Sam had never really gotten any more than glimpses of silver on the nearby rooftop.

Steve gets back from his morning jog, pours himself a cup of coffee, and is just about to sit down with the paper – _SIX MONTHS AFTER: WHAT REMAINS OF S.H.I.E.L.D?_ shouts the headline – when there’s a knock at the door.

He opens it to see Bucky, standing across the hallway with his back to the wall. It takes a moment for it to actually register with Steve, because while logically he knows that, as the Winter Soldier, Bucky has the resources to find where he lives, Steve had never actually expected this to happen.

“I’m not here to kill you, or anything,” Bucky says quietly, pulling both hands out of his pocket and holding them, one metal, one flesh and blood, in the air in the universal gesture for _I’m not armed_.

Steve knows Bucky probably still has some kind of weapon on him, but there’s something in the gesture that Steve finds reassuring anyway.

“Do you want to come in?” he asks.

Bucky steps inside; Steve can see how he hesitates, how he looks around the room for other people and for escape points. “I wasn’t sure you weren’t just something my brain made up,” he admits as Steve closes the door. There’s almost a bit of humor in his tone, and God, he _sounds_ like Bucky again.

“Of course I’m real,” Steve says.

He doesn’t say that part of him has thought the same thing about Bucky, that he’s been terrified the stress of waking up seventy years in the future has caused some part of his brain to go haywire and make him think his best friend isn’t, in fact, dead.

They stand there, staring at each other for a moment, before Steve breaks the silence. “Do you want some coffee?” he asks awkwardly, gesturing to the pot that’s on the counter.

Bucky shakes his head, shoves his hands into the pockets of the worn leather jacket he’s wearing. His hair is still long, though he’s pulled it back, and the stubble on his face is gone.

“I’m fucked up, Steve,” he says quietly, after another long pause. “I’m not the guy you think I am.”

Steve can see parts of the Winter Soldier in the way Bucky stands, even hunched over like this, as if he’s ready at any instant to reach for a weapon. His back is to the wall, so he can see all the exits, and his stance is solid. And yet, he sees his best friend there, too, in the way he’s got his hands balled up in his pockets, in his expression, in the way he looks at Steve.

“You’re my best friend,” Steve says. “Being through hell doesn’t change that.”

Bucky huffs, then. “I _killed_ people. You’ve read my file, right?” he asks.

Steve hates this, hates how far away Bucky seems even though he’s standing just feet away. He wishes Sam were here, because they’ve talked about Bucky and how he might be dealing with his memories. Sam’s got experience with this. But he’s out with some of the guys from his unit, and it’s just Steve and Bucky here now.

“I’m not going to pretend that the Winter Soldier never existed,” Steve says, trying to remember what Sam had told him about PTSD. “But that was HYDRA that did that to you.”

Bucky laughs, and it’s a cold, empty laugh that has no humor in it at all. It sounds foreign.

“You don’t think there was a part of James Barnes that was capable of doing those things before HYDRA messed with his brain?”

And Steve knows what he’s saying is true, because they’d all done things during the war that none of them were proud of, even if they said it was justified, even if they’d done it in the name of protecting others. For every one of the Howling Commandos’ daring missions that made it into the history books, there were three that weren’t quite so heroic. And hadn’t that kept Steve up at night sometimes, wondering if he wasn’t turning into the bullies that he’d hated so much.

“The James Barnes I knew was my best friend. Just because he _could_ do those things didn’t mean he _liked_ doing them.”

“You deserve better friends than me,” Bucky says, rubbing his left arm.

“I don’t want someone else, Buck. I can’t lose you again.”

And there it is, the thing that’s kept Steve awake all these months. He still wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes, remembering how all he could do was watch as Bucky fell into the white abyss. But the thing he’s been even more afraid of is that one day, Bucky’ll just be gone again.

Howard, the Commandos, Peggy… they’re all gone, and he’d thought Bucky was gone too. Now that Bucky is here, standing in front of him, Steve isn’t going to let him go without a fight.

“You’re my family,” Steve says. “The only family I’ve got.”

There’s a long silence between the two of them, and Steve wants nothing more than to reach out and touch Bucky, to reassure himself that his best friend is here. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything that might scare Bucky off. Instead he watches Bucky, who seems lost in thought.

After what seems like an eternity, Bucky speaks again. “And I came here hoping you’d never want to see me again.”

It feels like all the air has disappeared from his lungs. “What?” Steve gasps.

Bucky shrugs with his right shoulder, the flesh-and-blood one, and there’s almost a hint of a sad smile on his face. “I thought about leaving, but part of me always kept coming back here. Guess I thought it would be easier if I knew you hated me.”

Steve tries to smile, but it’s hard. “You’re my best friend. I could never hate you.”

He steps forward, then, so there’s only an arms’ length of distance between them. “Tell me to leave, Steve. Just tell me you never want to see me again and I’ll be _gone_.”

His tone is so desperate, it breaks Steve’s heart all over again. Not for the first time, he wishes Zola had survived the missile attack just so he could kill the man himself.

Moving slowly, carefully, making sure Bucky can see what he’s doing, Steve reaches out and puts a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “I can’t do that, Buck. You know I can’t.”

Bucky, who had stiffened at the contact, nods, a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Never did know what was best for you,” he says.

Steve lets himself smile too. Something inside him breaks, and he lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. It hits him like a freight train that this is real and that Bucky is alive and standing in front of him and _remembering_ him. He doesn’t feel so empty anymore.

And he thinks that maybe, just maybe, against all odds and in spite of everything that’s happened, he and Bucky might be all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Avicii's "Wake Me Up".


End file.
